How can business buyers attract sellers' resources?

Abstract

Research highlights• This study investigates what makes a business buyer attractive to a seller • Increased attractiveness encourages sellers' preferential treatment to customers • Supplier satisfaction and commitment facilitate the preferred treatment How can business buyers attract sellers' resources?Empirical evidence for preferred customer treatment from suppliers Abstract This paper describes a study that investigates what makes a buyer attractive to a seller in a business-to-business buyer-seller relationship and encourages the seller to commit to and invest resources preferentially in the relationship. The study helps answer the question, "What is it that the buyer needs to do to create this attractiveness?" The perspective is somewhat unusual in the marketing literature for two reasons. Firstly, because it investigates how the supplier perspective of customer financial attractiveness affects the attitudes and actions of the supplier towards the buyer, rather than taking the buyer's perspective across the relationship. Secondly, the study has relationship attractiveness in terms of financial performance as an antecedent of its relationship constructs, whereas most relationship studies investigate performance as an outcome. The paper develops a model that proposes the seller's perception of customer financial attractiveness, seller satisfaction, and seller commitment as drivers of the seller's preferred customer treatment by allocation of resources to the relationship. The bases for the study's model are the resource-based view of the firm, the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) models, and related resourcefocused theoretical streams. The study finds support for the model in the analysis of survey data.

Achieving preferred customer status in the Dutch plastics recycling industry

“…Dwyer et al (as cited by Mortensen, 2012Mortensen, , 1208 indicate that trust adds to satisfaction and thereafter to commitment, after which a preferential position may be obtained from the supplier. This agrees with quantitative research carried out by Baxter (2012Baxter ( , 1255. Baxter concludes that (great) contentment leads to commitment, which in turn leads to preferential treatment by the supplier.…”

“…In the literature this is referred to as "supplier satisfaction" (Baxter, 2012;Benton & Maloni, 2005;Essig & Amann, 2009;Hald, 2012;Hüttinger, et al, 2012;Nollet, Rebolledo & Popel, 2012;Nyaga, Whipple & Lynch, 2010;Schiele, Calvi & Gibbert, 2012;Schiele, Veldman & Hüttinger, 2010;Trent & Zacharia, 2012). Where a demand organisation understands how to distinguish itself from its competitors by better meeting the needs of the supplier than the competitors can, it may become possible to obtain preferential treatment from the supplier, referred to in literature as "preferred customer status" (Baxter, 2012;Ellis, Henke & Kull, 2012;Hüttinger, Schiele & Schröer, 2014;Moody, 1992;Nollet et al, 2012;Schiele, 2012;Schiele et al, 2012;Schiele et al, 2010;Schiele, Veldman & Hüttinger, 2011;Trent & Zacharia, 2012). A supplier can only be satisfied by the performance of their customer and give them preferred customer status after a customer is in the picture, so that positive expectations can be created with the potential supplier.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Interest in these topics in the marketing literature has intensified recently, particularly as interest in the co-creation of value (Vargo and Lusch, 2004) increases as well as further discussion about the contribution of resource-based theory in marketing (Kozlenkova et al, 2014). The nature of relationship resources, the availability of resources from one partner in a relationship to the other, and ways in which one partner might encourage the other to make resources available, and thus become attractive to the other (Baxter, 2012;Schiele et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2013), are explored in this special issue.The Schiele and Voss article examines, from the customer perspective, the resource implications of collaborating with the supplier. Many industrial customers are wary of becoming too dependent on a particular supplier, which may comprise a customer's competiveness in the longer term.…”

Increasing supply network transparency: structure model, mapping procedure and performance impact

“…The attributes of buyer attractiveness are rather unique and manifested only in one or two different buyer-supplier-relationships (Tanskanen, 2015). According to Baxter, a very important determinant for the preferred customer status is the financial customer attractiveness (Baxter, 2012). Furthermore, social exchange leads to non-materialistic benefits, such as social approval and respect (Blau, 1968).…”

“…Moreover, Ellis, Henke and Kull state that early supplier involvement and relational reliability positively affect supplier satisfaction (Ellis, Henke, & Kull, 2012). A high customer attractiveness is an antecedent of supplier satisfaction and can motivate the supplier to invest his limited resources in the common business with this customer (Baxter, 2012).…”